Meeting With The Dean
by Haberdashing
Summary: One-shot set in the Transcendence AU (transcendence-au on tumblr). While in college, Mabel has to have a meeting with the school's Dean of Students.


Timothy Williams looked down at the forms that had been brought to his attention once more as he waited to meet with the student he needed to talk to. Mabel Pines, that was her name. It wasn't one he'd come across often in his capacity as Dean of Students so far, though he'd heard some of the faculty members mention her name in passing, calling her a good (if eccentric) student.

The dean wished that his first meeting with Mabel could have occurred under more auspicious circumstances.

The door squeaked open and shut, and Timothy looked up from his paperwork to find a girl with long brown hair who was wearing a yellow sweater with a top hat knitted into it. She looked vaguely familiar; he could just barely remember seeing her around campus wearing a variety of equally eclectic sweaters. The girl gave the dean a nervous grin as she entered the room.

"My name is Dean Williams. And you must be Mabel Pines?"

The girl nodded enthusiastically, then pointed to a spot on her left. "And this is Dipper. He wanted to stick around so he could hear what you had to say. I hope that's okay."

Timothy Williams stared at the spot towards which the girl was gesturing, which appeared to contain nothing but thin air. That might be cause for _another _meeting. "Thank you for coming, Miss Pines. Feel free to take a seat."

Mabel sat down in the hard wooden chair in front of his desk, wiggling her legs in the space between the chair and the desk.

"I imagine you know why I wanted to meet with you today?"

Mabel looked down at her knees, and her aimless leg motion quickened as she murmured her response. "Because I yelled at Professor Ramos."

"That's correct. Now, this is the report I have of the incident. Please tell me if any of this information is incorrect." The dean began to alternate between looking at the face of the girl, who was still steadfastly refusing to make eye contact with him, and the form that he had in front of him, which he now held up so as to see the text better. "Last Tuesday, you were attending Professor Ramos' course on supernatural history. She was giving a lecture about the transcendence, and in the middle of it, you… stood up and began yelling at her, then left the classroom with twenty-five minutes of class remaining? Miss Pines, is all of that correct?"

Mabel Pines gave a quick glance to her left, then nodded and resumed looking at the floor, her shoulders hunched over. "…yeah."

"And since then, you haven't been turning in any of the work that Professor Ramos assigned for you to go over until she holds class again?"

With that last statement, the girl's head shot up, and she looked the dean in the eye once more. "You mean we haven't been having class?"

"No, she sent out several e-mails stating as much, and she's put up paper notices on the classroom doors."

Mabel played with her fingers and grinned sheepishly. "I wasn't checking."

"And her absence is another thing I wanted to talk to you about. Professor Ramos hasn't taught a single class since the incident last Tuesday, and yesterday morning she handed in a letter of resignation, saying something about being haunted by malevolent beings."

"What?" The girl stared at the blank patch of wall to her left, her face turned pale.

Timothy ruffled through the papers in front of him, though he already knew the information that he sought in them. "It says here that you got an A in your beginning summoning course, correct? Professor Richter said you were one of his top students."

The girl gave a weak nod, squirming in her seat.

"Miss Pines." The dean leaned forward slightly gave the girl a cold stare, though she was resolutely staring off to her left rather than returning his gaze. "Did you have something to do with Professor Ramos' resignation?"

"NO!" Her hands were shaking as her eyes darted between the dean and the wall. "I had _no idea _that some demon was bugging her! I wouldn't make her leave like that!"

"I… didn't say anything about a _demon_, Miss Pines."

The office abruptly filled with silence, and it began to feel much smaller than it really was, as if it could barely contain both of them at once.

Finally, Mabel stopped biting her lip and looked at the Dean, her eyes watery. "I… I didn't mean to…"

"Miss Pines! Why would you _do _something like this? You've never had disciplinary issues in the past, or given me any reason to suspect that you were anything but a good student, and you were doing just fine in Professor Ramos' class up to this point…"

"Because she said the Transcendence was all Alcor's fault!" Mabel blurted out. "And it wasn't! It wasn't his fault at _all_! I should know, I was there!"

"You… were _there_? At the Transcendence?"

"…yeah."

The dean started clicking away on his computer, still glancing over at the girl periodically. Just as the search results for her name were just starting to load, he was drawn away from them by the sound of the girl sniffling.

"Are… are you crying?"

A quick glance at the girl's tear-streaked face and puffy red eyes was enough to confirm it, but still she shook her head and muttered a quiet, "No." After a few seconds, she added, "…Maybe. But- I didn't want to hurt her, but- it wasn't his fault, it's _not _his fault, _none _of it was…"

"Miss Pines…" Timothy stopped and changed his statement. "Mabel… it's okay. I believe you."

A few sniffles later and the girl's tears had stopped and were replaced with a small, uncertain grin, though it seemed to be more directed to that spot on her left than to the dean.

He resumed his search. The first result was an Etsy store which sold a variety of brightly-colored sweaters, and there were a few links every once in a while to information about her history as a student, but… there were indeed pages connecting her to the Transcendence. At least half of the first page of results for her name mentioned the Transcendence somewhere on the page. Mabel Pines and Gravity Falls. Mabel and Dipper Pines, two twins at the center of it all. Dipper… that was the name she'd given to that empty space next to her, wasn't it? But during the Transcendence, he had…

That poor girl.

He looked back at Mabel, who was sitting up straight and gazing at the wall, and sighed. "I think I understand. And I've decided on the punishment for your transgression."

Mabel looked back at the dean. "Oh?"

"You will be assigned to volunteer work, so that you can best give back to our school's community. More specifically…" The dean drummed his fingers on his desk. "You will be working as a teaching assistant and tutor for some of our courses on supernatural history."

Mabel's face lit up, her eyes gleaming for reasons besides tears, and she broke out into a grin. "Ohmigosh, _really_?"

He pushed his paperwork to the side and nodded solemnly. "I believe it would be for the best for all parties involved."

"Yeah, sure, I can do that!" The girl stopped and lessened her grin. "I mean, anything to help the school, of course."

The dean smiled; the girl's energy was contagious. "Of course. Oh, and this is a formal warning. If you break the rules again, Miss Pines, your punishment will be much more severe."

"Right, right. And…" The girl looked to her left. "I will tell him- tell _the demon_ to _knock it off_."

"Okay. Well, I'm glad we could get this sorted out, Miss Pines."

Mabel gave the dean a toothy grin. "Me, too, Dean Williams. Me too."

And, before he knew it, the girl was out the door.


End file.
